# Chapter 9

Few mechanical toys sold and few weeks passed. Now Michael had the money to buy Neon the cracker. He gave him all the necessary data. All the information that Michael himself knew about the driver of that unfortunate car. And Neon stated looking up anything that he could find out.

The first thing that Neon did was to confirm that the crash happened to begin with. He looked up the dates and didn't find anything at all. No records of a crash. He re-asked Michael for clarifications. Michael was not sure that he remembered the precise day of the crash. So Neon had to look more. He broadened the search to the whole year of when, supposedly, the crash took place. He found seven different crashes on that same part of the road, that year.

This figure rather surprised Michael. He thought that car travel was a lot safer than this. Neon explained him that safety regulation clash with freedom regulations. Thus not requiring people too much to check their equipment. Which leads to a crash here and there. Of course in the case of crashes like this, they usually determine the person responsible and he goes through a series of explanations.

In the era in which they lived, due to increasing freedom regulations, police used force only in very specific situations. When a person is not arguable. Otherwise they would employ a stuff of psychologists who, instead of locking the person up in a cell, would give the person a thorough lecture on the nature of their wrongdoings. No force was used in it. And by law, the person had a right for an arguer. Arguers were something similar to lawyers. They would try to preserve the integrity of current person's beliefs. Psychologist's job was to enforce a viewpoint as such to explain the person the complete reason for why a certain law exists. If the psychologist fails, a proposal to change the law is automatically released to the public who would vote for it.

The proposal usually contained a short description of the still illegal activity that the person had committed with names omitted to preserve privacy to the person. If the law change would pass, the person would go home and the activity would no longer be illegal. Otherwise the case will be brought to the court which will decide the punishment for that person. If, on the other hand, the person understood the reasons for the law (lost the argument to the psychologist), he would go with minimum punishment, depending of the severity of the act it self.

Michael's dad apparently lost the argument. Since there was no record for a vote. On the other hand, the driver won the argument. And according to the testament of the argument: the driver didn't use an arguer. Presumably he was good with it himself. The vote went well for him and he was gone free. 

"Gone free?" - yelled Michael in fury - "He killed a little girl!". 

Neon explained the document itself. The reason for the driver to go free was that he did everything he could to save the situation. There was evidence that he actively tried to stir away and stop the vehicle. It was rather surprising for him to see a vehicle fall right in-front of him. Michael argued that there was time before the car flipped and the hit. He could see it potentially. But there was a problem with that too. Since the car slid down to the bottom of the turn and the turn was not very visible from the corner from which that other driver drove, that was impossible to see ahead of time. Michael was doubting the design of the mega-structures at that area. He remembered seeing a gap between the road and the rest of the mega-structures. He remembered being able to see the whole turn at once.

"Are you sure that you remember it correctly?" - asked him Neon.

Michael stopped to think about it. He was clearly remembering the turn visible ahead of time.

"Don't think about it..." - said Neon - "... you will muddy your memory." Michael didn't understand at first. So Neon had to give a short lecture about the concept of Memory Consolidation. If a person will store in memory all the detail that he had seen and felt, the brain will be filled up very quickly. Memory is stored in the brain in very small, important chunks of information. There is almost no detail at all. But the same way as reading a book can make you draw pictures in your head, memories when recalled gain all kinds of detail from other memories. You have to remember the form of, let's say, a chair only once. And when you store a memory of sitting, you don't need to also store a memory about the form of the chair as well. Since you probably already have one stored.

Michael still didn't understand it. Neon continued - "The problem is that sometimes you may remember key details correctly, but stuff that you haven't notice that day, could be different. For example, you say that you know for sure that there is a way to see the whole turn. While it could be true now, it was not very likely that you noticed it five years ago. So it seems like it could be that you are filling up this detail from the current knowledge of the place. And back then, there was a structure obscuring a piece of it."

Michael thought about it. There was, after all, a clear reason to remove that structure. Seven or so crashed per year on that same place. It was rather interesting and mind-boggling for him to think that he remembered it all wrong.

"Is there a name, address, anything?" - said Michael. Neon replied - "No, the motherfucker is good. We are probably looking for a hacker.".

Michael closed his eyes pushing one tear slowly out. An effect of Vodka Plus started crawling slowly up his brain. He saw that place, he saw again the tipped over car. The face of Molly. The hair that was in his face. Then the car of that driver. The face that he couldn't make out. The driver was trying viciously to turn and stop the vehicle. Michael imagined a knife in his hand. He jumped out through the metal. He flew with a force of million bullets. He landed on that car where there was this other driver. And he inserted the knife right into the driver's heart. He looked at his face. It was blank, no features. But it was sad. And Michael was sad too. He wanted viciously to do something with that man. But did he? He wasn't sure anymore.
